My 13 Year Journey with Archery

I wanted to share my journey with archery. It has changed drastically over the past 13 years.

This is me with my very first bow, a Browning Compound.

2003: I had always been interested in archery but never really thought much of it, so when I saw that my college offered an archery class, I jumped on it. Cause hey, why not? The class taught traditional archery using recurve bows. I fell in love on the first day. I was always so ecstatic to go to archery class. We learned so much and it really taught me the very basics of archery.

The weekend after the class ended, I went to the local archery shop and told them I wanted a bow of my very own. I got fully setup with a Browning compound bow. I loved that bow.

I practiced shooting at hay bails on my mothers land as often as I could. I didn’t get a bow so that I could hunt. I didn’t get it so I could compete. I didn’t get it for any particular reason other than I loved archery and just wanted to shoot a bow. It was all just for fun.

2004: I got a job at a summer camp teaching kids how to shoot archery. It was one of the best jobs I have ever had. Extremely rewarding and a lot of fun.

This is me with some of my students at the summer camp teaching archery. I’m in the white jacket in the very front. Loved these kids!

2005: Some personal things happened in my life and I stopped shooting my bow. The need to shoot wasn’t really present for a long time as life really beat me down for a while.

2007: A moving company lost my Browning bow. I cried. A lot. I didn’t get a new bow until…

2012: At the time, I had a job at Bass Pro Shops where I worked in the archery section. Bass Pro has their own brand of bow which is made by Diamond. I had been eyeing the bows for a long time, knowing that I wanted a new bow. I got a 40% discount on the Bass Pro brand bow! That was huge. My husband wanted a bow, too, wanted to learn archery. So we did a bow exchange for Christmas. He and I both got new bows and I began shooting immediately in our backyard. I taught my husband how to shoot his bow and he shot a lot with me. My love for archery had been reborn.

Though I still shot just for fun with no particular purpose in mind. My husband and I shot our bows as often as we could, though we didn’t shoot them all that often. It was a hobby, something we did for fun. Until…

2014: My long-lost friend from Oregon suddenly moved down to Texas! She had married a Texas boy, just like me. She had moved down to Texas, just like me. She was in archery, guns, hunting…just like me. We are a couple years apart in age, but we lived in the same cul-de-sac for many, many years when we were kids and were very close up until about high school where we lost touch.

Anyway, she had a bow, I had a bow, so we decided to get together and sling some arrows on her property.

A photo posted by MorganRogue (@morganrogue) on Dec 11, 2014 at 7:07pm PST

I was still just shooting for fun, right up until…

2015: I am very tuned into the outdoors industry and all the goings-ons. At the ATA show in 2015, Bowtech released the Eva Shockey edition compound bow. I had to have that bow. I don’t know what it was, I just had to have it!

A month later after the announcement at ATA, I had the Eva Shockey bow in my hands.

For the rest of 2015, I started really shooting my bow more than I had ever shot in my entire life. I was starting to get more serious about my aiming, exactly how I shot, everything. I had been shooting for so long that I had created a lot of bad habits for myself because I always just shot for fun, not for results. But the more I shot, the more I realized that I wanted to see results! I wanted to see tight groupings, I wanted my arrows to actually hit where I told them to hit. I was all over the place!

So I did just that. Between 2015 and present day (2016), I have been fixing my bad habits, been getting more precise with my shots and overall feeling more confident in my shooting. I have a purpose now with my archery and it has definitely made me a much better archer.

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Howdy! Welcome! My name is Morgan. I’m a wife, mother and preparedness advocate. If you’re looking to get prepared or to be better prepared, you’ve come to the right place! Conquer tomorrow, by preparing today!